1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to toy telephones, and more specifically to a toy telephone capable of recording and playing back messages from individuals whose pictures may appear on the pushbuttons on the face of the toy telephone.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In the period from the invention of the telephone to the present numerous toy telephones have become available to the consumer. All strove to emulate the real telephone with varying degrees of success.
One of the objectives of some toy telephone designers was to use the toy telephone as an educational device to help show a child that a real person's voice may be transmitted electronically from one telephone to another. This can be a difficult concept for a child to grasp: the other party is not generally visible, and the other party's voice generally sounds different when transmitted via telephone than it would sound in person. Hence the small child may not recognize the voice of even a close friend or relative when listening to that voice transmitted via telephone.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,713,035 was granted Thom for a rotary dial toy telephone that made one sound when the dial was rotated and a second sound when the dial was depressed axially. While this toy's exterior aspect approximated that of a real telephone, it didn't help educate the child in telephonically transmitted voice recognition. In addition, this toy may have confused children in that the toy made a noise when its rotary dial was depressed axially, which would not have been the case with a real telephone.
Sielaff obtained U.S. Pat. No. 4,505,358 for a pair of toy telephones joined by a pair of flexible speaking tubes, each of which was connected to the mouth piece of one toy telephone at one end and the earpiece of the second telephone at the other end. While this device allows two individuals to communicate via the voice tubes, the individuals talking with each other would generally be in plain sight of each other due to the limited length that it would be practical to make the speaking tubes. In addition the sound transmitted acoustically through the speaking tubes would differ from the electronically transmitted sound of a telephone.
T. Wolf was issued U.S. Pat. No. 3,422,566 for an elaborate arrangement in which a toy telephone could be placed in a given location atop a cabinet, which would close a circuit and cause the apparatus to produce a ringing sound. When the toy telephone was moved to a second location the ringing sound would cease and a recorded message issue from a speaker located in the cabinet. While an amusing toy, Wolf's invention did not teach the young child to recognize telephonically transmitted voices.
Another example of prior art toy telephones can be found in the form of U.S. Pat. No. 2,806,322 issued to S. Ford for a knockdown toy telephone. This toy was constructed of holed blocks assembled on vertical dowels, and was basically a three dimensional puzzle.
Finally, telephones exist currently available on the market which possess large enough pushbuttons with transparent covers to allow the placement of illustrations between the pushbuttons and the transparent covers.